By MONICA KELLY

mak012@latech.edu

 

The year 2007 has started out as good as any for Tech’s speech and debate team. In the first tournament of the year this past weekend at Louisiana State University-Alexandria, the team took first place overall.

Kris Lucas, team captain and participant in the open division of the tournament and a senior speech major, said the win was a great way to start the year and will hopefully put them on the map for more success to follow.

Nick Cordaro, a competitor in the open division and a senior speech major, said he was proud of the team with their overall win and also of the two individual wins from Leigh Masling, a participant in the novice division and Evie Breithaupt, a competitor in the open division.

Masling, a senior interior design major, won the novice division and said she was honored to receive the second place speaker award.

“Being able to speak well is such a talent and it’s an honor to have that talent recognized,” Masling said. “The win hasn’t quite sunk in yet and I’m getting pumped to defend my win at [the University of Louisiana-Monroe] in two weeks.”

Masling and Breithaupt concur that winning would not be the same without their teammates and the amount of support they receive from them.

Breithaupt, a graduate student of English, competed last year at Louisiana College and said she likes competing with the Tech team because it is more of a team effort.

“When I got to the semifinals and the finals, everyone on the team got on their laptops and did research for me during prep time,” Breithaupt said. “Kris Lucas helped me out a lot for the final round which was about baseball versus football, something I don’t know too much about.”

Breithaupt said a lot of the team members came out to watch her in the final round.

“The best part about winning was how exciting my teammates got,” Breithaupt said. “It was a feisty, exhausting tournament and I was too tired to absorb it all myself.”

Despite the exhaustion, the team is staying busy preparing for their next tournament, Feb. 2 and 3 at ULM.

ULM’s R.J. Bicker Debate and Individual Events Tournament is sponsored by the ULM Speech and Debate Forum and held in honor of the late Dr. Robert J. Bicker, a former director of forensics at ULM.

Breithaupt said the team will be really busy for the rest of the quarter but that everyone is ready to get back into competition at ULM.

Breithaupt said, “LSUA was a great tournament for everyone, and hopefully we can roll off that momentum and keep the National Championships this year.”